Akbank & Optdcom
Akbank and Optdcom cut CPA 41% while scaling spend 8x on Realize
Akbank and Optdcom cut CPA 41% while scaling spend 8x on Realize
- 8x Investment growth year over year
- 41% Net reduction in CPA
- 81% Increase in CTR with Motion Ads
Company
Akbank is one of Turkey’s largest privately owned banks. They worked with Optdcom, a performance marketing agency based in Istanbul, to scale credit card acquisition campaigns on Realize.
Challenge
Akbank needed to scale Axess credit card acquisition volume significantly while reducing total cost per acquisition.
Solution
Optdcom used Realize to run AI-optimized campaigns combining Predictive Audiences, Motion Ads, and Maximize Conversions bidding to find and convert high-intent applicants at lower cost.
Results
Akbank scaled its Realize investment 8x year over year while reducing total CPA by 41%, driven by a 72% CPA reduction from Predictive Audiences and an 81% CTR lift from Motion Ads.
Introduction
Akbank is one of Turkey’s largest privately owned banks, founded in 1948 and headquartered in Istanbul. The bank provides services to more than 13 million active customers through over 700 branches, offering retail, commercial, corporate, and private banking alongside payment systems and investment services. Axess, one of Akbank‘s flagship products, is a mass-market credit card that rewards everyday purchases with chip-points redeemable across a wide merchant network. The card has held significant market share in Turkey’s competitive credit card sector since its launch in 2001.
Optdcom is a performance marketing agency founded in 2015 and based in Istanbul, with a focus on digital strategy and data-driven advertising. The agency manages campaigns for dozens of leading brands across Turkey, including Samsung, Turkish Airlines, McDonald’s, and Akbank, with capabilities spanning performance marketing, search engine optimization, web analytics, and direct media buying. For this campaign, Optdcom was responsible for translating Akbank‘s growth brief into an actionable media strategy, managing campaign execution, and securing brand approvals in close collaboration with Realize.
Optdcom turns to Realize to scale Akbank's credit card acquisition
Akbank had been running campaigns on Realize to drive Axess credit card applications, with Optdcom managing execution and translating Akbank‘s marketing briefs into campaign strategy. In 2024, the team used the platform as a baseline channel, testing performance and building familiarity with its tools. The results were promising, but Akbank wanted more. Their goal for 2025 was to scale acquisition volume dramatically while bringing total cost per acquisition down at the same time.
Scaling spend typically means reaching further into an audience pool, which drives costs up. Optdcom needed a platform that could maintain targeting precision as budgets grew. They had already seen Realize‘s AI engine perform well at a smaller scale, and they believed it could hold up under significantly higher investment. In 2025, Akbank increased its Realize budget eightfold.
Optdcom launched the campaigns on Realize, Taboola‘s AI-driven performance advertising platform, which helps brands reach high-intent audiences and drive measurable outcomes across native, display, and video placements on the open web. They ran all campaigns with Maximize Conversions, an automated bidding strategy that uses conversion data and user behavior signals from the Taboola Pixel to adjust bids in real time and deliver the highest possible number of conversions within budget. This allowed Optdcom to scale the investment eightfold year over year while the algorithm optimized toward the lowest possible CPA across a much larger volume of credit card applications.
Predictive Audiences and Motion Ads drive efficiency at scale
Two Realize products became central to the campaign’s performance.
The first was Predictive Audiences, which uses first-party conversion data from the advertiser’s site to identify and target new users with a high likelihood of converting. For Akbank, that meant finding people across the open web who showed behavioral signals consistent with completing a credit card application. Predictive Audiences became the primary driver for cost efficiency, delivering a 72% reduction in CPA compared to campaigns running without it. Rather than relying on broad audience segments or manual targeting, the feature allowed Optdcom to let Realize‘s AI find qualified applicants at scale without exhausting the audience pool as budgets grew.
The second was Motion Ads, short looping videos that add movement to native placements without requiring sound. Optdcom had been running high-quality static image ads as the foundational creative format, providing consistent brand visibility for Axess across Taboola’s publisher network. But when they introduced Motion Ads, the visual dynamism changed the campaign’s engagement profile. Average CTR increased 81% after Motion Ads were introduced. The movement helped Akbank‘s creative stand out in premium publisher environments where static ads were competing for the same attention.
Together, the two products addressed different parts of the funnel. Predictive Audiences improved who saw the ads. Motion Ads improved how those people responded to them. The combination produced a net 41% reduction in total CPA while the campaign was running at eight times the previous year’s investment.
Realize becomes a primary performance channel for Akbank
The results shifted how Akbank and Optdcom think about the platform. In 2024, Realize was a supporting channel in Akbank‘s media mix, one of several performance options alongside search, social, and other display. By 2025, it had become a primary performance engine for high-volume credit card acquisition.
That transition was driven by the numbers. Realize outperformed standard benchmarks on cost efficiency, with Predictive Audiences reducing CPA by 72% and Motion Ads contributing an additional 9% improvement. The platform’s ability to maintain and improve efficiency as budgets scaled gave Akbank the confidence to reallocate spend toward Realize and away from channels that could not match its cost per acquisition at similar volume.
Optdcom credits the results to both the technology and the partnership. Taboola’s account team provided strategic recommendations, performance optimization, and regular review meetings to keep campaigns aligned with Akbank‘s goals. Optdcom handled the day-to-day execution, managing campaign setups, securing brand approvals, and adapting strategy based on what the data showed. That division of responsibilities allowed both teams to focus on what they do best while keeping the campaign moving toward Akbank‘s acquisition targets.
Following the success of 2025, Realize has transitioned from a test channel to a central part of how Akbank plans its performance media, with the team focused on continuing to scale acquisition volume while driving costs lower.
We set an aggressive growth target for 2025 and needed partners who could deliver both scale and efficiency. Realize proved it could do both. The platform has moved from a supporting channel to a primary performance engine in our media mix, and we plan to continue building on that momentum.
- Aysin Gultepe, Digital Sales and Growth Manager, Akbank